About

Do you even WordPress?

It's a great Content Management System, used by a large % of the websites you visit. Super simple for beginners through to pros to get a modern looking website full of content up.

I could go on about how useful it is, but I'd rather highlight two of its problems:

Security

Though better than the bad old days, when we all used 'nevergonnagiveyouup' as our passwords and had to manually update WordPress each time a new version came out, it's still a security headache to run a WordPress site.

You may be using a free theme or plugin that hasn't been updated and tested against website vulnerabilities, leaving your site exposed to bad actors.

Static HTML is by nature a LOT more secure than a dynamic site like one powered by WordPress.

Speed

Like how all the useful plugins you have in WordPress allow you to display all sorts of useful contents, menus, links, etc on your website? Your visitors would, too, if it didn't take 5 seconds to load it! We can't all afford fast (read expensive) web hosting for our WordPress sites.

With the WP Static HTML Output Plugin, you can host your WordPress site on the cheapest, lowest power hosting you can find, or even on your own computer, if you don't have other users contributing content.

When your users visit the static version of your site the plugin has generated, they are simply fetching the HTML page, the CSS and any JavaScript, not making a bunch of costly calls to the webserver and database as was the case with your WordPress site.

See your site's performance vastly improved using one of the website speed benchmarking tools, such as Pingdom's.

Helping us to version 3

The lead developer, Leon Stafford, has been ramping up development of the plugin over the past year, delivering some exciting new export options and jazzing up the UX a few notches.

Version 3 aims to bring a much needed optimisation to the plugin to allow those using cheap/limited web hosting to perform exports that take a long time to complete (most hosts limit the amount of time a PHP process can run for, causing large site exports to timeout).

This is the main optimization to come in version 3, which will really help those who are most in need of the performance improvements the plugin offers on cheap/underpowered hosting plans.

Also included are the new features and bug fixes initiated in the last few point releases, but often rushed out without time for testing and hence needing some real cleanup of the code and extensive testing on both PHP 5 and PHP 7.

What satisfied users of the plugin are saying

"Awesome plugin - It does what it advertises, works great, I love it, this is amazing!" -- Turcu Ciprian

"super fast static wordpress on raspberry pi - great tool to run a wordpress site on your raspberry pi – and have a sound loading time. It takes a minute to generate all html files, but the loading time, compared to the original wordpress site is just great. Google page speed up to 92 from 75." -- quanttrader

"It is fantastic! - It’s just fantastic! I really hope you don’t stop supporting this plugin. It’s like Jekyll static site generator, even better! Unlike Jekyll, we have all the benefits of WordPress. Thank you!
I’ve run a portable local server on a usb flash, and can now update the site even with the Windows tablet. Even on Android there are bunch of local server apps. For some people it will be more convenient..." -- tesmon

"Worked like a charm. - I used it to retire two of my blogs http://www.vrypan.net/weblog/ and http://www.vrypan.net/log/ (both served as static HTML pages now)." -- vrypan

Stretch goals

Should the campaign raise more than the target amount, funds will be allocated towards adding more roadmap features and really improving the testing infrastructure. I have a nice quick development setup with Docker, but the automated builds on CircleCI aren't running any tests. More funding will allow me to focus on building up a big test matrix with different PHP and WordPress versions that run on each build.

The largest of the roadmap features are:

WP CLI integration

ability to trigger a build on publishing a post or via CRON/WP-CRON

incremental exports based on diff'ing previous export

The settings screen is also getting a bit overwhelming with all the new options. An initial "Simple view" with the minimal for most use cases that can be switched to an "Advanced view" will be most helpful to new users.

Risks and challenges

As with any software projects, estimation of time to complete them can be a bit of a unicorn.

After more than 7 years of developing this plugin, the lead developer has a much better idea of a feature/bug's potential scope, with this Kickstarter project's goal reflective of time needed to get v3 to a releasable state.

All code is committed (sometimes with proper commit messages) via GitHub, so backers can follow along with transparency or even help by spotting bugs int the code before the developers do!

Pledge AU$ 30 or more
About US$ 23

eBook in multiple formats

This book is the culmination of my years spent squeezing performance out of websites and the 1,000+ WordPress sites built for clients over my career.

This book is written for you, someone who enjoys using WordPress to build their website and wants to get the most out of it. You've probably logged into your WordPress site, added some content and are ready to show it to the world. I don't presume much more technical knowledge than that, though this book should serve as a reference to fresh WordPressers and experienced developers alike.

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge AU$ 100 or more
About US$ 76

Translation of your choice added

Originally only offered in English and Japanese. We have Chinese translations awaiting the v3 release. Here's a chance to get Finnish, Klingon or your language of choice supported for the v3 release, too!